Software Development, Technology and Innovation

Partnership Vacuum

My role at Readify is pretty diverse. One day I can be up to my elbows in technical detail and other days I can be focusing on business relationships. I’m pretty sure that my technical background influences the way I look at business relationships.

I tend to look at relationships in terms of mutual benefits. The best partnerships are formed where both parties can put something into the relationship that the other really appreciates and can benefit from. Every so often I talk to organisations where the benefits don’t align to a great need on one or both sides of the relationship. In this situation the potential partners should agree to part ways and invest no further but keep the door open to future collaboration, but what can happen is a kind of “over politeness” where neither side are willing to admit that they see no benefit in a formal partnership. The result is the creation of a partnership with no activity at its centre, creating a kind of partnership vacuum.

Moving forward I’m going to try to be better at calling this out when I see it. The cost of not avoiding partnership vacuums is exertion of effort trying to create artificial value where no natural genesis exists.